Murder of Russian journalists in Africa linked to secretive mercenary group they were investigating, reports claim

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A makeshift memorial to Orkhan Dzhemal, cameraman Kirill Radchenko, and producer Alexander Rastorguyev, who were killed in the Central African Republic in July while investigating Wagner mercenariesCredit:
Sergei Savostyanov/TASS via Getty

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Three journalists murdered in the Central African Republic in July were being accompanied by a driver connected to the secretive Russian mercenaries they were investigating, a report has found, calling into doubt Moscow's official explanation that they were shot in a robbery.

The new investigation provides the strongest evidence yet that Orkhan Dzhemal, Alexander Rastorguyev and Kirill Radchenko were killed for trying to report on military contractors whose existence is not admitted by the Kremlin.

The revelations came after the CAR revealed its army's chief of staff trained in Russia, highlighting Moscow's growing military ties with Africa, which have alarmed the West.

The CAR defence minister said during a visit to Russia on Thursday that Moscow was welcome to open a military base in the war-torn republic, where rebel groups still control large areas.

Thursday's findings on the journalists' killing uncovered troubling links with Yevgeny Prigozhin, a catering magnate dubbed “Vladimir Putin's chef” who is known as the patron of the Wagner mercenary group they were investigating.

Prigozhin was sanctioned by the United States in February for financing the troll factory that interfered in the 2016 presidential election to help Donald Trump. Washington sanctioned Wagner in 2017 for fighting alongside Russia-backed separatists in eastern Ukraine.

The findings come from the Dossier group run by Putin foe Mikhail Khodorkovsky, who was funding the three journalists' CAR reporting through his investigations centre. He shut down the centre amid an outcry over the lack of safety precautions on their trip.

Russian investigators concluded the trio were “attacked by unknown people who intended to rob them and were killed when they tried to resist,” according to the foreign ministry.

But the journalists' money and film equipment were left on the road, a Khodorkovsky representative told The Telegraph last year.

Mobile phone records and other documents have now shown that their driver was linked to Prigozhin, and they were being followed by Emmanuel Kotofio, an officer of the CAR's police special forces.

“The journalists were under the control of people from Yevgeny Prigozhin's structures starting from the preparation stage,” the Dossier centre said.

Before and after their killing, Kotofio repeatedly called their driver and a Russian instructor under the command of Valery Zakharov, security advisor to the president of the CAR.

Mr Zakharov previously worked as a security consultant for companies belonging to Prigozhin, according to a joint report by Fontanka and Prigozhin's Federal News Agency.

Bizarrely, the journalists' editor had asked a Federal News Agency reporter for help organising the trip. That reporter put the three men in touch with a mysterious fixer named “Martin,” who said he couldn't meet them but sent a former police officer to drive them.

The gendarme following the journos, Emmanuel Kotofio, quickly arrived at the murder site "with 3 Europeans" but left the bodies. He had been frequently calling a deputy of Zakharov, the Russian security advisor to CAR's president. He reportedly got a promotion after their killing pic.twitter.com/w7bsn99lvd

Although they had been planning to travel east from Sibut to Bambari, their driver instead took them north, where they were ambushed and shot. Mr Radchenko was severely beaten before being killed. The driver was unharmed.

Soldiers at a checkpoint on the road later told Dossier reporters that Mr Kotofio and three armed white men had come through 20 minutes before the journalists. They allegedly warned the soldiers to let the reporters' jeep pass.

Following the killing, Mr Kotofio was reportedly promoted.

Another journalist who had investigated Wagner mercenaries died in Russia in April when he fell from his balcony. The day before he had told friends about armed men in his stairwell.

Russia has been expanding its presence in Africa through investment and military deals, and Mr Prigozhin and his Wagner group, which played an unacknowledged but decisive role in the Syrian war, have been at the vanguard.

A former mercenary told The Telegraph that white men in camouflage photographed at protests in Sudan this month were Wagner mercenaries involved in training local police.

Mr Prigozhin was filmed sitting at the table for talks in November between Russia's defence minister and Khalifa Haftar, head of the Libyan National Army.

His operatives are reportedly advising militaries and election campaigns in 10 African countries.

Muslim rebels overthrew the president of the CAR, an impoverished former French colony, in 2013 but were later pushed back by Christian militias in bloody fighting.

The United Nations granted an exemption from sanctions for Moscow to deliver weapons and send 175 military instructors to government forces in the CAR in 2017.

After Russia and the CAR began joint “exploratory mining concessions” last year, however, reports suggested that Wagner mercenaries were guarding gold and diamond mines in rebel-held areas.

Zakharov has been linked to Russian mining companies registered in the CAR.

In August, the two countries inked a military cooperation agreement.

That same month, France, the United States and Britain placed a hold on further arms shipments from Russia to the CAR, although Moscow was allowed to send another 60 instructors.

The CAR's defence minister told state media on Thursday that Russian instructors had trained 1,300 of its troops at an “army educational centre” in Berengo, adding that this could be expanded.

The three Russian journalists tried to visit Wagner troops' reported headquarters in Jean-Bedel Bokassa's former palace in Berengo, where the late dictator was accused of feeding enemies to lions and crocodiles or cannibalising their flesh himself.